Spread­ing out

Pirelli reck­ons the F1 field will spread out as the season goes on this year, based on down­force sim­u­la­tions from the teams. This year will fea­ture the re­turn of a de­vel­op­ment war, with teams able to take ad­van­tage of more reg­u­la­tory free­dom to gen­er­ate down­force, which will have an im­pact on the tyres. Pirelli has de­vel­oped new tyres to de­grade less to al­low driv­ers to push for longer, and has done sim­u­la­tion work on down­force lev­els. “If you look at the sim­u­la­tions, at the start of the year, the [down­force] val­ues com­ing from each team are quite close to­gether,” said Pirelli’s rac­ing man­ager Mario Isola. “Look­ing at the val­ues at the end of the year that take into ac­count the rate of de­vel­op­ment, it’s a bit wider.”